Interpreting India’s Presidential Soap Opera

The presidential election is slated for July 19 and the winner will replace Pratibha Patil, who became the first woman to hold the presidency in 2007.

India’s political class has somehow managed to turn the election for president – a largely ceremonial post with few powers – into a soap opera with surprising alliances, power plays, dramatic snubs, and some real implications for the stability of the Congress party-led government.

It would be easy to yawn at this process: beyond the power to invite a party to form a government in a time of political crisis and offer non-binding advice on bills and judicial nominations, the president isn’t exactly a force in Indian governance and spends most of his or her time welcoming foreign dignitaries for fancy dinners and giving speeches.

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But in a series of bizarre developments on Wednesday, New Delhi made this contest quite intriguing.

First, the Congress party’s apparent top choices for president were revealed publicly for the first time not by the party’s top brass, but by Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress. This was a curious way for the announcement to happen, of course. Ms. Banerjee is technically an ally in the Congress party-led ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition but has blocked several of the government’s proposed reforms in the past year. This had made her relationship with the Congress party increasingly tense. Ms. Banerjee told reporters that based on her conversations with Congress leaders the party seems to favor Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Hamid Ansari for president.

Later, Ms. Banerjee gave an impromptu press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in which they put forward a competing slate of candidates, including former president and rocket scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former Communist party leader Somnath Chatterjeeand, wait for it, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

It’s hard to view that last recommendation as anything but a major snub to Mr. Singh, given what a dramatic demotion his “elevation” to president would be. Mr. Singh has been under fire for being at the helm as India’s economic growth has waned to its slowest pace in nearly a decade. “That’s a way of saying we have no confidence in him as prime minister – that’s the most significant element of this,” says political analyst B.G. Verghese.

Congress spokesman Janardan Dwivedi told reporters Thursday there was no question of moving Mr. Singh out of his current post. “We cannot afford to spare him as the PM,” he said.

Mr. Dwivedi also took at a shot at Ms. Banerjee for jumping the gun with her announcement of Congress’s preferences for president, saying the Congress party hasn’t yet made up its mind. “If we would have made a decision on this [presidential candidate], it would have been one name and not two,” Mr. Dwivedi said. He said the slate of candidates proposed by Ms. Banerjee and Mr. Yadav were “not acceptable” to Congress. “How can Mamata make announcements?” he said.

The Congress party had been lately courting Mr. Yadav as an ally and a balancing force against Ms. Banerjee, so seeing the two of those politicians team up could not have been heartening to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. “It’s intriguing – maybe they’re trying to build up a third front” in Indian politics against the Congress and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Verghese said.

He said both politicians may be using this process to exert leverage on the government on other matters: Ms. Banerjee wants debt relief for her red ink-plagued state of West Bengal (she is the chief minister), while Mr. Yadav, he said, may be angling for a cabinet post in exchange for supporting Congress.

Many political analysts said the shifting political equations are bad news for the candidacy of Mr. Mukherjee. He is the Congress party’s political maestro and go-to fixer in times of scandal and crisis, but critics are questioning his stewardship of the economy and inability to enact major reforms.

The election itself is slated for July 19. The winner will replace Pratibha Patil, a 77-year-old former Congress party politician who served as a governor and member of Parliament and became the first woman to hold the presidency in 2007. Ordinary voters don’t have a say – the electors are members of Parliament and state legislatures.

Traditionally, the ruling party’s candidate has a strong chance of prevailing, though it’s not unusual for parties to strike last-minute compromises. The Congress-led coalition, the United Progressive Alliance, controls 42% of the votes – that assumes Ms. Banerjee’s support, which seems highly questionable now. The BJP and its allies have 28% of the votes.

Political analyst Chintamani Mahapatra, professor at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, says the confusion over electing a president reflects how no major party has enough power or seats in Parliament to force through their choice. “It is a volatile situation since neither the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance nor BJP-led National Democratic Alliance are able to propose a candidate who is sure to win,” Mr. Mahapatra says.

Mr. Mahapatra says both Mamata Banerjee, whose party has 19 seats in the lower house of Parliament, and Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party has 22 seats, have “good numbers” to influence the election process.

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